


mistaken for strangers

by adversarya



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, POV Outsider, Vaguely Crack-ish, Where did Gendry go (again?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 19:35:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17772947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adversarya/pseuds/adversarya
Summary: A stranger shows up at Winterfell. As far as Sansa is concerned, Arya's reaction is the strangest part of all.





	mistaken for strangers

**Author's Note:**

> If D&D give me a good Gendrya reunion I shall forgive all their sins. (Oh who are we kidding they're going to botch it.)

The man had the look of a warrior about him, broad and tall with a certain stubbornness evident in the clench of his jaw. Yet there was a certain timidity in his gaze Sansa found intriguing. 

Even a few years ago the first thing she would have noticed about the man would have been that he was handsome, with inky black hair and a powerful build. But that was before Ramsay and Petyr and Joffrey, before King’s Landing and the Vale and her eyes being opened to the depths of human cruelty. Now she looked into his blue eyes not to determine whether they were better likened to the sky or the sea but to decide if he presented a threat. 

He had shown up at the gate with a missive bearing the Stark seal, so the guards had brought him to her directly. The message was written in Jon’s hand, somewhat aggravatingly short and evidently scrawled in haste, as was her brother’s way: 

 

> _Gendry Waters is Robert Baratheon’s only known surviving bastard, and as such was deemed too much of a risk to bring to King’s Landing. He is also an accomplished smith and has earned both my trust and my respect_. _Give him full run of the forge. —Jon._

 

All useful information. None of it, however, explained Arya’s reaction even a little.

Sansa had no idea where her sister had been prior to entering the great hall, or how she knew about Ser Waters’ arrival at all, but the Lady of Winterfell had only just begun to question the newcomer when she suddenly noticed an Arya-sized blur crossing the room at full speed. Knowing what she was capable of, Sansa would not dare interfere, but at once began to contemplate how she would explain to Jon that their sister had murdered his smith.

In fact, Sansa was so involved in fretting over how to make _Arya has been confined to her quarters because she killed your smith, sorry Jon_ sound less… well, _bad_ , that it took her far longer than it should have to notice that no murdering had taken place. Yet.

Instead, Arya had stopped mere inches from the newcomer, staring at him in that unreadable way she had developed doing gods-knew-what who-knew-where.  

“M’lady,” he greeted, bowing his head respectfully. The moment he looked back up she searched his gaze. Striking quick as a viper she grabbed him by the chin, forcing him to lean towards her as she scrutinized his face. He flinched instinctively but did not fight, even as she prodded her fingers along his jaw. After several moments that stretched out longer than they had any right to, Arya finally released him, sufficiently appeased.

“You survived,” she said, measured and even. “And I’m still not a lady.”

“Well you look like one now,” he replied. His ears had already been red from the cold but nonetheless, Sansa was quite certain he was blushing. And that he had no idea what a lady was supposed to look like, considering Arya wore a tunic and trousers and had at least three blades on her person, but that was beside the point.

“Well then I guess you’re still stupid,” Arya said, and Sansa was shocked to note a hint of playfulness in her tone, unlike anything she had heard from her sister since her return, a glimpse of the mischievous girl she remembered from childhood. 

And then Arya stepped even closer and pulled the man down by the collar of his jerkin. Sansa might have protested had her jaw not promptly dropped to the floor in her shock. 

She wondered idly if there had been something off about the wine at dinner the night before, and if maybe she was dreaming because unless her eyes were deceiving her, Arya was kissing Jon’s bastard Baratheon blacksmith. Who, after a moment’s hesitation, kissed her back. Quite soundly.

Arya clutched her arms around Gendry’s neck. He had straightened to full height and Sansa noted with some amusement that Arya’s feet were now dangling several inches from the floor. As she slowly began to recover from the initial shock, Sansa found she actually felt quite calm, if incredibly confused, about the entire situation, and decided she felt she was handling the surprise quite well.

Then again, it might also be that in comparison to the army of reanimated dead coming to kill them all and Bran claiming to be a three-eyed raven, the absurdity presented by the current situation was relatively small in comparison to what it might have been under non-apocalyptic circumstances.

Still, they seemed to be getting, for lack of a better word, _worse_ , and Sansa realized she might have to do something. 

She cleared her throat. And then again. Loudly. Thankfully it worked because she was not fully sure what else she could do while retaining some shred of her own dignity. A bucket of snowmelt had been among the possibilities.

Gendry ended the kiss and lowered Arya back to the floor. Sansa noted he had the grace to look somewhat embarrassed, which was far more than could be said for her sister. Still, both seemed barely aware of her presence, as wrapped up as they were in their little world of two. Neither looked like they were about to address _what in the seven hells was going on_ —at least not in words, spoken out loud such that she, too, could understand them—and the Lady of Winterfell realized she would have to be the one to initiate what was sure to be an enlightening conversation.

“I take it you know each other?” Sansa asked.

 


End file.
